Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Witness Tonight

Tonight, he will be listening to President Obama making his case for gun safety reform at tonight's State of the Union Address. And not only that, but he will also be seeing several gun violence survivors in the audience. One of them will be Heck's former colleague in Congress, Gabrielle Giffords. Giffords herself as plenty to say about gun violence, and she isn't waiting until tonight.

I've already caught this ad on local cable here. Constituents of Heck, and of Senators Harry Reid & Dean Heller, are seeing this. And they're reminded of the horror of what happened in Tucson just over two years ago. Can we really afford any more of that, or of what happened in Aurora & Newtown last year?

That's not the question that the gun lobby wants us to think about. That's why a NRA lobbyist tried to dismiss current efforts for gun violence prevention as "The Connecticut Effect". You see, it's easier for the NRA to sweep this under the rug when it's just some distant, esoteric, and sterilized philosophical debate. It becomes much more difficult for gun industry lobbyists to defend what they're doing when confronted with actual reality.

Yet that's what's happening today. The gun lobby, along with Members of Congress, must confront reality. Harry Reid, Dean Heller, and Joe Heck must see those who lost loved ones to gun violence tonight. And they must ask themselves if we can go any longer without significant gun safety reform.